[OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer

[Matt Amos]

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 7:36 AM, Peter Miller <peter.miller at itoworld.com> wrote:
> There is both the situation were OSM bulk-imports some data
> from another source into OSM that is published as ODbL where the
> original data owner can not be contacted which I would hope would be
> possible,

under the ODbL as proposed, i don't think it is possible. the
contributor uploading the data would have to contact the source to
obtain permission for OSMF to sub-license it.

> Removing the right for anyone else to migrate to a new license in the
> situation that ODC is not able to do so would clearly be
> inappropriate, especially as we can't be sure that OSMF will still
> exist in 50 years!

these are the choices, as i see them:
1) licensees can use other licenses and may choose the meaning of
"compatible", in which case the loophole of re-licensing BSD appears.
2) licensees can use other licenses, but only those approved by the
original Licensor (OSMF), in which case the data is non-forkable and
arguably non-free.
3) licensees must use ODbL. like the GPL, once it is GPL-licensed only
the original source may re-license it.

> How do other organisations deal with this situation and can we learn
> from them?

the only similar situation i can think of is trolltech's licensing of
Qt. but even then it was the GPL - they weren't allowing licensees to
migrate to a new license.

cheers,

matt